Scotty Gall 1903 -1996

Ernest James Gall (Scotty Gall) was my Great Uncle. He left Aberdeenshire to search out a better life in Canada. He worked for the Hudsons' Bay Company but I never knew that he was the first person to navigate a vessel through the Bellot Straits of the Northwest Passage in one season. As of 2010 I also have a good "detective" friend from Canada, George Duddy, digging up interesting facts about Scotty Gall's life. Thank you, George, for all your help and encouragement throughout this project.

After a lot of correspondence and debate with various people and authorities my good friend, George Duddy from White Rock, BC, Canada, has managed to have a plaque manufactured and erected at Victoria Harbour at the "Explorer's Walk" inhonourof Ernest James “Scotty" Gall.

Further New as of October 2017. The Vancouver Maritime Museum have recently included a Northwest Passage Hall of Fame at their Museum where Scotty Gall and the HBC Aklavik have been recognised as a great achievement in 1937.

I found this first article on the Web. I had a paper copy given to me by a friend who was researching my family history in 1996 but I have started to do some research myself through the Internet and found quite a lot about him from various sources in Canada. As of 2010 I also have a good "detective" friend from White Rock, Canada, George Duddy, digging up interesting facts about Scotty Gall's life. Thank you, George, for all your help and encouragement throughout this project.
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This article is by Mark O. Dickerson, Department of Political Science University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4.

E. J. (Scotty) Gall

The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) had been in the North for centuries and continued to play a dominant role in the period following World War I. Scotty Gall, an 18-year-old growing up just outside Aberdeen, Scotland, decided there must be a greater future for him than working in a local foundry. So he applied for an apprenticeship with the HBC and came to Canada in 1923. This was the beginning of Gall’s career in the North, which lasted until his retirement in 1966.

One of Gall’s prized possessions is a silver box on which is inscribed:

Navigating the Northwest Passage in 1937 was a feat still unknown to most Canadians. The more publicised trip of the St. Roch, the RCMP ship, in 1942, is generally regarded as the first Canadian transit through the Passage. However, Scotty Gall piloted the HBC ship Aklavik through the Passage in the course of dropping supplies to HBC posts in 1937. He admits his trip was not publicised because individuals with the Bay at the time did not see that it was in their interest to publicise anything in the North.

The trip of the Aklavik required a great deal of preparation at its home port of Cambridge Bay. The crew had to be prepared, for example, to spend the winter away from home if caught in the ice. The big drop of trading goods on this trip in late 1937 was to be at Gjoa Haven on King William Island, and then the target was to transit the Northwest Passage - Bellot Strait, on this occasion - by 1 September, before freeze-up.

After the stop at Gjoa Haven, the Aklavik headed up along Boothia Peninsula. Once it reached Bellot Strait, Gall remembers that “the ice was piled up on the reefs and along the shore, and the current was running pretty fast.” At that point he saw an opening and “went for it!” The easterly run through the strait was successful, and the night was spent on the northeast end of the strait, at a location then known as Kennedy Harbour. They returned west through the Bellot Strait the following day, 2 September. Gall admits a certain amount of luck was involved, because their success depended largely on the nature of the ice and the accuracy of their dead reckoning. Nevertheless, the trip remains quite a tribute to their daring.

The Aklavik was 60 feet (20 metres) in length and drew 6 feet (2 metres) of water. It was powered by a 35 hp Fairbanks-Morse engine. While it was not a particularly good freighter, carrying only 40-45 tons of cargo, it was considered an excellent vessel for the Arctic. A few years after the 1937 trip, the Akluvik caught fire and sank off Cambridge Bay.

The voyage itself should be considered in context. It occurred before ships were equipped with radar. At the time, navigation was done by what Gall calls “instinct.” He has an interesting philosophy about such instincts. For example, he has great admiration for the Inuit. Living for centuries in the region, they had developed an amazing ability to read the currents, tides, winds and weather. He recalls that when walking with them on land, they could detect far more than he could. Gall respected these skills and, not boasting, said that by 1937 he had developed the same instincts. His explanation was that many people in what are now the British Isles depended throughout countless eras on the same instincts. Their skills now, however, lie dormant from lack of use. In his years in the Arctic he feels that he was able to draw on these instincts and to develop them to a maximum while he was in charge of transport for the Bay.
Gall began his working years in the region checking books for travel in winter was by dog team and sledge. In a season he would cover thousands of miles visiting posts. On one trip he traveled to Herschel Island, down to Fairbanks, back to Herschel, then over to Bernard Harbour at the mouth of Coronation Gulf. Obviously good dogs were worth a lot in those days, and he admired the abilities of his friend, the late L.H. Learmonth, considered to be one of the best with dogs. Learmonth also had met Gall in the Passage in 1937 on the HBC’s Nascopie, contracted by the federal government for the Eastern Arctic Patrol.

Finnie was the government cinematographer aboard the Nascopie on the occasion of its successful first meeting with the HBC's western Arctic supply ship Aklavik at Bellot Strait in 1937, thus completing the opening of the Northwest Passage as a commercial route. In a Beaver article, "Trading Into the Northwest Passage," Finnie wrote that he was impressed by this "romantic" and "historic" event, but at the same time questioned this expansion of trade into the Canadian north.

While living in Yellowknife in 1958, Gall was appointed to the Northwest Territorial Council. At the time the council was in transition from being an appointed body to becoming an elected assembly. In 1958 there were five appointed and four elected members. In 1959 he was nominated to run in a by-election for one of the elected seats. He won that election, and in the general election in 1960 he was again nominated, winning that one by acclamation. In 1964 he was defeated in a very close race by Peter Baker.

This particular time was one of change in the North. The government in the 1950s significantly altered its policy for the region. Between 1920 and 1950 government presence in the North was almost non-existent. Much of the public administration was carried out by individuals in the Bay, the Anglican and Roman churches and the RCMP. This low profile of the federal government began to change by 1953. Education, health care and housing policies were launched, and within a decade the government was present in abundance. The change was the product of a debate between two schools of thought. The first, for financial and other reasons, advocated that government policy should be minimised in the region, permitting the Indians and the Inuit to maintain a traditional way of life. The second school suggested that, like it or not, the North was changing, as was the lifestyle of its people. Advocates of this position argued that the residents of the region should have opportunities equal to those of all Canadians. The latter prevailed, and by 1958 permanent settlements were being constructed. This policy permitted officials to provide more extensive education and health services for remote communities.

Gall did not agree with all aspects of this policy. Having been involved in the fur trade, he felt that permanent settlements would induce changes that possibly could jeopardise the ability of hunters and trappers to market furs. Change, then, could affect the Bay as well as the welfare of the Indians and the Inuit. It could mean the decline of a source of income that gave people in the region some degree of independence. Gall’s arguments failed to carry the day, and the communities became a reality, usually constructed around Bay posts or church missions.

Gall has a particular view on the role of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the North. Was the presence of the Company good for the North? He observed first-hand both sides of the question. The Bay, as an institution in the North, did provide a great deal. It was a vehicle for marketing furs, providing income for native people. And at the same time the factors in each post had a budget for relief, and the RCMP could requisition rations for destitute families. One must remember that prior to the 1950s times were often tough, especially during severe winters, when game was scarce. At the same time, the Company had a monopoly during most of those years. There was little competition for selling furs and frequently individual trappers did not feel they received a just price for their products. Gall knows there were problems but feels that for the most part the factors were honest and did the best they could for individuals in and around their posts.

Over his 43-year career in the North Gall had a variety of responsibilities. During World War II he ran a radio station at Cambridge Bay. There he turned in daily weather reports vital to tracing weather systems across the Arctic that could affect flights from Canada to Great Britain. After the war he ran a number of stores for the Bay in Yellowknife.

Scotty Gall spent the bulk of his working life in the North. Now, however, he is living in a beautiful setting in Victoria, where I visited him last summer. Over the years his accomplishments have been a part of the history of the North. One of these accomplishments, his trip through the Northwest Passage in 1937, may be one of the best kept secrets in Canada. Interestingly, that trip by a Canadian was not only noteworthy in itself, but in addition it demonstrated survival skills honed in an extreme climate. With technology what it is today, Gall may be among the last of a generation with the opportunity to acquire and use those skills.

Taken from the People’s Journal, Saturday January 8th 1938Aberdonian’s Arctic Feat - Navigates North West Passage – Fate of his wife
An Aberdonian, Mr Ernest J Gall, has the honour of being the first to penetrate the Bellot Strait, a hitherto unexplored part of the North-West Passage, by ship.

By his feat he made history, for he was thus able to make contact with another vessel, the Nascopie, which had navigated the North-West passage from the East, Mr Gall having sailed from the West.

Thus this North-West passage, which had been the will-o’-the-wisp after which explorers have chased fruitlessly for one hundred years, was traversed, from end to end, in one season, for the first time. At the same time the Aberdonian played his part in the establishment of the most northerly of the Hudson’s Bay Company stations at the farthermost point of Boothia Peninsula & Fort Ross. (Click for Links) See other link here for Somerset Island by Mário Gonçalves.

It is indeed a striking coincidence that an Aberdonian should have played so prominent part in this outstanding event, for it was from Aberdeen that Sir Leopold McClintock sailed in the Fox in 1857 in search of the missing Sir John Franklin, who, with his many companions, lost his life in seeking for the North-West Passage. Several times McClintock tried to force his way through Bellot Straight, but failed.

This week I chatted with the Aberdonian, who is Mr Ernest J Gall. Immediately after his feat he left for home on vacation, and was living with a cousin at 86 Salisbury Place, Aberdeen. He revealed to me that actually his achievement was a hollow triumph, for just as he was leaving Cambridge Bay to the south of Victoria Island, and was heading towards Bellot Strait, tragedy crossed his path.

He is captain of the Hudson’s Bay Company vessel Aklavik, and all the year round he roves from post to post with supplies. On those trips his wife, a young American lady whom he married five years ago accompanied him.

On this occasion of the bid to navigate the North-West Passage Mrs Gall, in order that the ship might travel as light as possible, undertook to run the diesel engine. The Aklavik was moving from Cambridge Bay when there appeared on the scene a scooner with supplies which the Aklavik had to convey North. The Aklavik went forward to meet the other, and there was an immediate response to Mr Gall’s “slow ahead” signal. A few minutes later he signalled again, but this time there was no reply. Sensing that something was wrong, Mr Gall ran below and there, beside the engine, he found his wife lying dead. She had been overcome by a heart attack, although to her husband’s knowledge she had never previously been ill. But Mr Gall did not turn back. Too many other plans would suffer if he failed. At Cambridge Bay he found a missionary and two nurses, and Mrs Gall was given a Christian burial on that desolate shore. With anguish at his heart the Aberdonian lost no time in pushing on, his wife’s place being taken in the engine room by an Eskimo girl.

Several times the Aklavik was in danger of being nipped by the ice, but the most exciting moment of the trip was at the western entrance to Bellot Strait when the engine failed. A swift current flowed, and disaster threatened as the little vessel was swept towards the rocky shore. I the nick of time a faulty part of the engine was replaced but the rest of the trip had to be made at half speed, with mechanical improvisation due to stripped gears. The ship which they met after leaving Bellot Strait was the 2500 ton Nascopie; the Aklavik was a 30 ton schooner. Soenate?? of great excitement accompanied the meeting, which was a fitting celebration. For 15 years Mr Gall has been employed in the far north, and during that time except when on leave, he has never been south of the Arctic Circle.

Shortly after leaving school he went to Hudson Bay Company. For a period of two years he was trapping on his own, and mineral exploration also engaged his attention for a time. Copper was the quest, although in the same locatality another company found pitchblende, from which radium is extracted, in fair quantity. He was on board the s.s. Baychimo when she was nipped by the ice, and the crew had a thrilling experience before they were rescued. This vessel is stated to be still adrift in the ice which trapped her – a sort of “Flying Dutchman” of the Arctic. Mr Gall, in his little scooner, has probably travelled farther than any other Hudson’s Bay man, for he has been on the move all the time, going from post to post with supplies. He revealed to me that by the establishing of a post at Fort Ross (LINK) the company now had a complete chain of stations from coast to coast. That had been the company’s ambition for years. Although they had succeeded in navigating the Bellot Strait, it would not always be possible to use it. The conditions had been very favourable when he ventured through. Mr Gall who is known in North Canada as “Scottie”, hailed originally from Fraserburgh. Both parents are dead.

Brocher Navigates North-West Passage
A Fraserburgh man has had the honour of being the first to penetrate the Bellot Straight, a part of the Northwest Passage, by ship. The feat is a historical one as, for hundreds of years, explorers have tried to accomplish the feat of traversing the passage from end to end. Mr Ernest J. Gall, who is a captain of the Hudson's Bay Company vessel Aklavik, travelled from port to port with supplies. He was accompanied on these trips by his wife, an American Lady, whom he married five years ago. Mrs Gall, in order that the ship might run as lightly as possible, undertook the charge of the engines when the trip through the Northwest Passage was contemplated. But tragedy swiftly followed. As the Aklavik was moving from Cambridge Bay another schooner appeared with supplies, which the Aklavik had to take north. Mr Gall sent down the signal to “slow ahead”. There was no response. He signalled again, and still no notice was taken. Mr Gall rushed below to find his wife lying dead as the result of a heart attack. As far as her husband knew she had never been previously ill. In spite of this Mr Gall did not turn back. There was too much at stake. An Eskimo girl took his wife’s place in the engine room. Mrs Gall was buried on the desolate shore of Cambridge Bay.

The Aklavik had an exciting trip. She was often threatened by ice and on one occasion the engine failed in a swift current. The vessel was in danger of being swept on a rocky shore but; in the nick of time repairs were accomplished. The rest of the journey, however, had to be made at half speed. After leaving the Bellot Straight they met the 2,500 ton Nascopie (the Aklavik was 30 tons). The crews were greatly excited and celebrated in fitting fashion.

Mr Gall has been employed in the far North for 15 years, never leaving the Arctic Circle. He went to Hudson’s Bay shortly after leaving school and was a trapper on his own for two years. He also engaged in looking for minerals. In North Canada he is known as Scottie. Both Mr Gall’s parents are dead; his father was a well known here however, being stationmaster of Fraserburgh for some years.

Article from the Edmonton JournalNOTE: This article says that Scotty Gall was the Skipper of the Baychimo. I believe that he was not the Skipper but he was travelling to Coppermine on Baychimo. .Each shipment brought new diseasesSkipper recalls bringing TB infected Indian back to CoppermineBy Marc Horton
Scotty Gall, skipper of the Hudson’s Bay Company trader Bay Chimo, clearly remembers the day that he put the terminally ill Uluksuk and Dr. Russell Martin ashore at the small village of Coppermine in 1928. “Of course I remember Uluksuk,” the 89 year old Gall recalls from his retirement home in Victoria. “He was the Eskimo who ate the priest’s liver because he hoped to take the man’s spirit,” Gall remembers.

Ulkuskuk, along with Sinnisiak, was convicted in 1917 of the murder of two Oblate missionaries, Fathers Guillaume LeRoux and Jean-Baptiste Rouviere. Both Inuit were sentenced to prison following a trial in Edminton and then an appeal in Calgary. While in Edminton, Uluksuk contracted spinal tuberculosis and was being returned to his home village of Coperfield after doctors in Aklavik decided he would soon die.
“I remember him on the deck of the boat, coughing and spitting,” says Gall.
Uluksuk was so ill – his spine had collapsed as a result of the disease and the infection had become generalized throughout his body, an autopsy would later show – that he had to crawl ashore.

“And every time a plane or a boat came in, they brought the flu and colds,” Gall remembers. He was never worried about catching tuberculosis himself. “The snow house helps breed it, I think,” says Gall, who spent many nights in igloos while in the arctic. Spending a night in a snow house, where temperature hovers at freezing point and everything is damp, is a miserable experience, he says. “I always made a point in trying to get a dry house as often as I could,” he says. “But I learned lots from the Eskimos. They are very clever people,! He says. For many of the Inuit in the arctic, Gall was the first white man they had seen. He would navigate the Northwest Passage, become locked in the ice of the Arctic Ocean and have to be rescued by airplane, serve as a manager of the Hudson’s Bay store in Yellowknife and be elected to a number of terms on the Territorial Council. He also learned to speak Inuktituk, the language of the Inuit.

Gall is an eloquent witness to the tragic consequences of one culture imposing its values on another and he provides one small example of how the requirements of a trading economy changed the lifestyles of Inuit. “Before we went up there, arctic fox skins were used as sanitary pads for women,” he says. With the arrival of traders arctic fox became a valuable pelt upon which the Inuit would come to depend to get money for supplies. The accent of Aberdeenshire still thick, Gall doesn’t choose sides in the pursuit of converts by the churches. “The Anglicans were as bad as the RC’s,” he says. “Both churches had their hardtack Christians.” Hardtack is a northern staple, a rock-hard biscuit that’s broken molars throughout the North. “These people each had their point of view and there were some of the natives who couldn’t understand how there was one creator and different views. It was hard for them to stomach that”, Gall says. The unbecoming contest for converts reached its height when an Inuit would die. Whichever church won the right to perform the burial service was regarded as the winner. Gall, whose comments add punch to the new documentary Coppermine, sums it all up in the film’s final scene. There is much passion behind his words. “God damn it,” he says, “the Eskimos came out of the ice age, they followed the ice and they survived without us, with their own primitive methods. And we go in there with our guns and everything and interrupt the cycle. The Eskimo I knew was a hunter and they always looked after one another. OK, OK. What have we given them? We’ve given them the benefits of civilization, but we’ve given them the dope and booze, too. So are we ahead or behind? I know the Caucasian steamroller. I really know it….”
HERE IS A CLIP FROM THE VIDEO "COPPERMINE"

This is a Copy of a Personal Diary written by Scotty Gall to Mr. V. W. West, District Accountant, Hudson’s Bay Co. to account for his trip from Herschel Island to Fairbanks and return. By all accounts a very tough and long trip in arduous conditions.
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Herschel Island, Feb 3rd, 1925

Weather fine, 30 – 40 below; got
up 4.30; broke camp 7 A.M.; took on extra load of tent, camp-stove and beans;
arrived at Head Point 8 A.M.; Proceeded all day by creek and portage to Canoe
River; camped beginning of Glacier; 35miles.

Pulled out of Millar Road House
daybreak; crossed Eagle Divide forenoon; travelled on Eagle Creek in the
afternoon; overflow; stopped at 12-mile Road-house for the night; 30 miles.

Monday, Dec
8th, 1924

Left 12-mile road-house 8 A.M.; went
over summit with fair wind; travelled all forenoon on Creek; glare ice and
overflow; had lunch Faith Creek Road-house; travelled on Mail Trail all
afternoon; stopped the night Half-way Roadhouse.

Tuesday, Dec
9th, 1924

Left Half-way Roadhouse daybreak;
travelled on Mail Trail 8 miles; struck the Government Road; arrived at
Chateneka 12 A.M.; Stopped for lunch; left 2 P.M.; had coffee at Fox; arrived
at Fairbanks about 8.30.

60 below; left Shoeman House
7:30; made tea 1 P.M.; back on Porcupine River; slight head wind; dogs not
working good, too cold.; camped John Herbert Place 8 P.M.

Thursday,
Jan. 1st, 1925

Blowing hard at the “Howling
Dog”; decided to camp.

Friday, Jan.
2nd, 1925

Blowing; broke camp 7 A.M.;
blowing hard on River; missed the 7 mile Portage; had to do extra 20 miles
through loos snow; made David Lloyds Place 3 P.M.; had tea; proceeded to Old
Rampart House; arrived 7 P.M.; People were dancing there to 2 A.M.; New Year
festivities; could not sleep.

Saturday,
Jan. 3rd, 1925

Ambrose feeling sick; lay over
and rested dogs.

Sunday, Jan.
4th, 1925

Left Old Rampart House 9 A.M.;
Weather fine; had tea 20 miles up river; arrived New Rampart House 6 P.M.; Corp
Young goinf hunting next morning; decided to lay over and try to get some meat
as dogs were in poor condition.

Monday, Jan.
5th, 1925

Weather fine; left barracks about
9 A.M.; went up a creek about 5 miles; no signs of caribou; walked around on
snow-shoes till dark; going home picked up two carcasses Young had shot some
days previous; bought meat from him at 10c per pound; gave dogs a good meal.

Tuesday,
Jan. 6th, 1925

Fed up the dogs on deer meat; lay
over; 60 below.

Wednesday,
Jan. 7th, 1925

65 below; left Rampart House 6
A.M. dogs not working good, too cold; had to break trail half the way; arrived
Old Crow 6 P.M.; find that all the men have gone out deer-hunting; Ambrose did
not come saying it was too cold to travel.

Broke camp 4:30; travelled all
day and night; missed our way; arrived on the coast at King Point about 1 A.M.
Wednesday morning; made for Head Point; arrived there about 5 A.M.; proceeded
to Herschel Island; arrived there about 3 P.M.